There is a considerable amount of prior art in the of field of backup and restore systems. Several well-known backup and restore systems are currently marketed by companies such as Veritas and IBM. These systems provide reliable, secure backup and restore capabilities by utilizing a server that contacts each registered client in turn to request to a backup session. The client system generally has an agent installed that communicates with the backup server, and together the backup server and client agent negotiate a mutually acceptable arrangement for performing the backup. The server might contact the client and tell the client that it will be available in the next half hour to perform a backup of the client, and ask if the client can agree to that schedule. If so, the client waits to be contacted by the server and makes preparations for the backup if required.
These backup systems usually require a server and one or more clients. The server oversees the operation and provides the storage for the backed up files. In general, the clients are polled to provide their backup data to ensure that the server has the capacity to perform the backup at the specified time, with backup performed at the convenience of the server, and not the client(s). In order to complete the backup, however, the client system must be connected to the network at the same time the backup server is available or the backup cannot be completed.
For traveling users, getting their system backed up can be a chore. In order to get backed up, the client system must be on the network until contacted by the backup server. It is likely that a traveling user's system will never be connected at the very moment that the server gets around to backing it up.